The Truth Ain’t Nothin’ but a Big Mac

America hates the truth about itself as much as any other country, but the truth it hates to admit the most is the truth about free speech: free speech and real truth seldom find each other because the angry mob never wants to hear the truth, especially about itself. The angry mob shouts of freedom, the freedom to lynch somebody rather than have to face the truth.
This past weekend the angry mob gathered in Washington, D.C. to vent its anger at the “injustice” of the imagined tax burden they would shoulder under the leadership of” that black man” Obama. Never mind what he said in a gloriously intelligent speech last Wednesday about “not one dime.” No, the angry mob knows he lies. Just ask Joe Wilson, probably not the last of the great baton twirlers for the old Confederacy. If you’re angry enough, you must be right. That’s how truth is forged: with the heat of burning belief. Don’t let the facts interfere. “Creationism” is alive and well because ignoring facts is practically a religion in America.
Free speech is never free. If it is free, it falls on deaf ears. If it has any power, it has money behind it. It is not the freedom but the money that gives speech value. If there is enough money, the so-called “free speech” gets delivered over and over until it becomes “truth.” In other words, in America you have the freedom to finance your “free speech” to such an extent that the sheer volume of its presence in the culture makes it the truth. Just look at the effect of advertizing on the American public and you can see how Big Food, Big Drugs, and Big Health Insurance all work symbiotically to trap the American public in their vicious cycle of obesity, poor health, poor virility, and prescription drug use. Watch a football game or the evening news and you’ll see the cycle in action about 30-to 40 percent of the time you watch.
Thanks to the law that makes the corporation a “person” in America, the Supreme Court is about to improve the free speech rights of that so-called “person” by no longer limiting the amount of money a corporation can throw at the character-assassination of politicians they want to destroy or the image-building of politicians they want to promote. We may technically still have one-person-one-vote democracy in America, but the notion of free speech is a joke. Effective speech is not free and is, in fact, becoming more expensive all the time. It is becoming so expensive that only large corporations have enough money to manufacture the “truth” as they want us to see it.
The corporate dupes like Joe Wilson and many other Republicans whose elections depend on generous corporate sponsorship and “true believers” in the unchallengeable freedom of corporations to brainwash us continue to protect the status quo at the expense of the health and well-being of the nation. They may not be aware of this fact, but they continue to be a major part of the problem out of adherence to a belief in the principle of free enterprise without being able to see that the state of free enterprise in America is about as free as speech is. Existing corporations do everything they can to make certain that actual free enterprise does not exist. They view competition the same way John D. Rockefeller did: “a sin.”
I fear Big Corporations more than I fear Big Government and with good reason. Until Big Government restores real free enterprise through effective law to protect and promote real competition, we will continue to need Big Government as the last defense against complete corporate take-over of this country. Perhaps it is already too late, given the evidence of the brainwashing corporate America has exercised over the waddling masses yearning for more Big Macs and Viagra. If Big Government is somehow successful in dismantling the stranglehold Big Business has on the American psyche and culture, then it can shrink back to a human scale as well. But let’s downsize the corporation before we downsize the only defense the people have against the continued ravages and waste the corporate Gorgons perpetrate.